07 September 2013

Why is Assad’s use of WMDs so much worse than Syrian rebels' allying with jihadists?

By Andrew C. McCarthy

Have
you noticed who exactly the opposing camps are in Syria’s civil war —
the aspect that the side chomping at the bit for American military
intervention would prefer not to discuss?

In one corner, we have
Bashar Assad. Unlike President Obama and his minions, who spent their
first couple of years empowering Assad — Obama reopening diplomatic
ties, Hillary pronouncing him a valiant “reformer,” Pelosi huddling with
him, Kerry wining and dining him — many of us alleged “isolationists”
on the right were never under any illusions about him. Assad is an
anti-U.S. thug, the junior partner of Iran, America’s mortal enemy on
the Shiite side of the Islamic-supremacist street. While the Obama
administration has made an underwhelming case that the Syrian despot has
used chemical weapons, let us stipulate for present purposes that the
case is airtight. Let’s even concede the more dubious claim that Assad
has launched more than one small-scale chemical attack.

Now on to
the other corner: the Sunni Islamic supremacists, who are called
“rebels” by the Beltway clerisy to avoid the inconvenience that they
describe themselves as mujahideen (jihad warriors). The rebels
are teeming with al-Qaeda-affiliated and al-Qaeda-inspired operatives —
“extremists,” as the Obama administration and the GOP’s McCain wing call
them, avoiding the inconvenience that what they are “extreme” about is
Islam. Guys who ought to know better, like General Jack Keane, laughably
underestimate
their number at less than 4,000. But even Secretary of State Kerry
conceded in congressional testimony that it is several multiples of that
amount — as many as 25,000 (i.e., up to “25 percent” of a force that
Kerryput at “70,000 to 100,000 oppositionists”).

Even if things were “only” as bad as Kerry suggests, that would be
a frightening picture. After Benghazi, do you suppose empowering — I
should say, further empowering — 25,000 jihadists might be a
smidge problematic? But that’s not the half of it. Kerry was desperately
trying to portray the “rebels” as predominantly “moderate”;
undoubtedly, he was low-balling.
Moreover, no matter what their number is, al-Qaeda affiliates punch way
above their weight. They are trained, organized, disciplined, and
lavishly funded by Gulf states that are delighted to have them make
their mayhem outside the Gulf.

Even worse, the Obama Left and
the GOP’s McCain wing are applying Washington’s lunatic definition of
“moderate.” By this thinking, the Islamic ummah is divided into
two camps: an al-Qaeda fringe in one, and in the other the teeming
millions of “moderate,” tolerant, peace-loving “democracy” activists. In
this fantasy, the Muslim Brotherhood — whose name the Beltway strains
to avoid uttering in discussions of Syria — is moderate . . . and never
you mind the bloody catastrophe the Brothers have wrought in nearby
Egypt over the last few weeks and months.

In truth, the
Brotherhood is an implacably Islamic-supremacist organization that is
“moderate” only by comparison with al-Qaeda, and, even then, only if we
are talking about al-Qaeda’s methodology of full-time savagery — the
Brothers are part-timers who, unlike al-Qaeda, think violent jihad is
just one item on the sharia-installation menu. As far as ideology goes —
i.e., the imperative that sharia be installed — the two are on exactly
the same page. If anything, the Brotherhood’s influence over the
“oppositionists” is even greater than al-Qaeda’s. The Brothers are the
antithesis of moderate. They are anti-American (though they’ll happily
take our help before using it against us), anti-democratic (though
they’ll happily hold popular elections in Muslim-majority countries),
and rabidly anti-Semitic.

Are there secular democrats in Syria? Of
course there are. Just as in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East,
however, they are severely undermanned. The contention that there is a
strong alternative force within the opposition — rebel factions that
oppose Assad, and that not only oppose the Qaeda/Brotherhood factions
but are capable of winning without them and then running the country
despite them — is a pipedream.

The “rebels” know this even if
Washington won’t come to grips with it. Colonel Fatih Hasun is General
Salim Idriss’s deputy in the Free Syrian Army (FSA) — the assortment of
purportedly moderate militias Senator McCain and the Obama
administration claim it is in America’s interest to support. On August
22, Colonel Hasun announced that most of the senior commanders were threatening to resign from the
FSA’s supreme military council because they reject two Western “red
lines”: the demands that they (a) cease collaboration with al-Qaeda and
(b) refrain from seizing Assad’s chemical-weapons sites. The FSA has no
problem working with terrorists. Ideologically, many of its members have
more in common with jihadists than they do with the West; more
significantly, they know they cannot win without the jihadists.

Moreover, there’s the dirty little secret about chemical weapons: The rebels not only want them, theyhave them and they quite likely have used them, both in Syria and elsewhere. Al-Qaeda has been seeking to procure and use chemical weaponsfor over 20 years
— and unlike Assad, al-Qaeda affiliates are quite likely to use them
against the United States and Israel if they have the chance.

Now,
I have a confession to make: I am unimpressed by the Western obsession
over chemical weapons. They are ghastly, yes. But so, in the wrong
hands, are bombs and jumbo jets and hollow-point bullets. To me, the
shrieking over weapons of mass destruction is the international version
of the Left’s domestic campaign against guns, and of a piece with its
trendy revulsion against land- and sea-mines. This is the delusion that
discord is caused by the song, not the singer. It is a cop-out: the
pretense that there is a valid excuse for failing to grapple with the
players and the ideologies that resort to violence — as if we live in a
make-believe world where destructive weapons in the right hands are
unnecessary to keep us safe; and where laws, conventions, and purported
“norms” against various types of weapons are effective against rogues
like Assad and al-Qaeda.

I’ll also confess to being even less persuaded than usual by the
chemical-weapons arguments made specifically by those advocating
American military intervention in Syria. They have been pushing for the
administration to jump in on the side of the “rebels” all along — to arm
them and abet them in the jihad against Assad. Their campaign has
gotten precious little public support for a very simple reason: The
American people are repulsed by the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda. For
that reason, in addition to there being no national-security interest
in supporting those forces, few American politicians dare make a
full-throated case for doing so. Supporters either try to abet the
“rebels” without talking about it (as Obama did before the 2012
election), or rationalize that they are abetting “the
moderates” . . . and hope you’re too uninformed to know who the
“moderates” are (as Obama has done since the 2012 election).

For pro-interventionists, then, Assad’s use of chemical
weapons has been manna from heaven. It has enabled them to rivet the
nation’s attention to Assad’s atrocious war-fighting methods, to the
exclusion of such unsavory considerations as the guarantee that
attacking Assad promotes al-Qaeda and the Brotherhood — to say nothing
of the jihadists’ even more alarming pursuit of chemical-weapons
capability.

Personally, I believe al-Qaeda is worse, by far, than
the use of chemical weapons. And someone somewhere must agree with me
since Congress, by something close to 535–0, voted to authorize the use
of military force against al-Qaeda. No one, by the way, needed to twist
arms or promise the American people we wouldn’t put “boots on the
ground” to get that authorization. It was a slam-dunk because it was so
patently in the national interest — even though it has meant a dozen
years of war, with ground troops, missiles, drone strikes, indefinite
detentions, thousands of casualties, the whole run of gore that war
entails.

So by all means, let’s assume Assad has used chemical
weapons on a small scale against other Syrians during a bloody civil war
that, though undeniably awful, poses no threat to American national
security.

By contrast, Assad’s “rebel” opposition, spearheaded by the anti-American Muslim Brotherhood, systematically uses al-Qaeda in its military operations — not one or two times, but every single day, and in virtually every attack that causes real damage to the regime.

Why is Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons worse than the rebels’ use of al-Qaeda?

One
thing I’m proud of,” cultural icon Barack Obama boasted to MSNBC’s
crack team of sycophants in 2006, “is that very rarely will you hear me
simplify the issues.” On this, he has certainly been true to his word.
Brevity and candor, shall we say, are not among our smartest president’s
strengths nor, outside the abstract, is he much of a salesman.

If you’re thinking that it is little short of breathtaking that a
man who is content to talk at length to the press about a gay basketball
player could have the temerity to characterize a question about the
constitutional order of the United States as an intrusion, you’re
absolutely right. What the president should have said is: “This is
straightforward. If Congress refuses to authorize me to order action, I
will not order any action.” This would not only have comported admirably
with his own on-the-record profession that it remains illegal for the
executive branch to order “military action” sans the blessing of the
legislative branch, but it would also have been the only possible answer
that tallies with his having asked for permission in the first place.

It
will no doubt prove easy for the keener apologists of the fast-waning
Obamacult to convince themselves that their much-assailed hero is merely
being magnanimous. Indeed, we have already heard such spin: The
president is admitting to Congress an “unprecedented” “consulting” role;
or he is “democratically” recruiting a skeptical public to take part in
his difficult decision; or — most amusingly, perhaps — he is trying finally
to reverse the long and checkered history of executive military
usurpation . . . which includes his unilateral decision to bomb Libya in
2011.

Nevertheless,
as gauche as it might sound to those who make a living being
inscrutable, sometimes in politics questions really do have simple
answers. Yesterday, speaking to journalists at the G20 summit in Russia,
Obama was asked again and again what he planned to do if Congress
refused to authorize action in Syria. The president brushed away the
question as if it were an irrelevance. “You’re not getting a direct
response,” he told journalists. When they pushed him anyway, he termed
the matter a “parlor game.”

One almost has to admire the man’s consistency. In St.
Petersburg, Obama went so far as to apply his favored test to the
United Nations Security Council, peremptorily waving away the authority
of an institution, which he has historically recognized as estimable,
with the now familiar explanation that it is “paralyzed, frozen, and
doesn’t act” — and, we are therefore to accept, moot. Students of
history will note the delicious irony of this statement’s being
delivered a few miles from the city’s Tauride Palace, in which the
short-lived imperial State Duma briefly set up shop at the turn of the
20th century. Then, Czar Nicholas II was so angry at what he regarded to
be the impositions on his prerogative — the product of concessions
forced by the 1905 revolution — that, before business had even started,
he issued some “fundamental laws” according himself the title of
“supreme autocrat,” conferring on himself the right to veto any
parliamentary decision that was unpalatable to him, and allowing himself
to dismiss the body on a whim. Now, almost a century after the Duma was
dismissed so that the Great War might be more efficiently prosecuted,
Obama stood outside a Russian palace and delivered his own imperial
assessment: I can do what I want.

From the rest of us, though, this ploy should elicit a
healthy “Oh, come off it!” The Obama administration has long presumed
that constitutional rules bind the executive only if and when it judges
those rules to be sensible, friendly, or apolitical. Immigration,
welfare, Obamacare, the debt ceiling — Syria is just the latest issue on
which it is asserting exemption from the law. How often have we heard
the president tell adoring crowds that if Congress will not act he “will
do it anyway”? Or, as he put it to Colorado Springs’ KOAA-TV in 2011,
“It would be nice if we could get a little bit of help from Capitol
Hill,” but, if it isn’t forthcoming, “we’re going to go ahead and do it
ourselves.”

Don’t get me wrong: I’m always
up for listening to an American president bash the United Nations. But
it helps if he does so for the right reason. The United Nations is
useless not because the incumbent president considers it to be
temporarily dysfunctional or unsupportive of his aims but because it is
an inherently corrupt, flawed, and feckless operation that — unlike
Congress — has no binding influence on the United States. If one is to
submit to the U.N., which this president has generally argued America
should, then one must stand by its decisions when one doesn’t like them.
It should be clear to all but the most partisan and obtuse that if an
institution can’t say no — for whatever legal reason — then it
is not an institution at all. Instead, it is an advice column, detached
from the body politic and unworthy of the attentions of the head of
state.

This is all to say that this president’s reflexive view of
executive power needs smashing — and smashing hard. The constitutional
order of the world’s greatest republic is not to be subjected to a veto
if it yields messy results, nor does it set a good example to pretend to
respect international bodies but to bolt when they no longer suit. The
rule of law and the integrity of public institutions are the very root
of any successful society, just as their dissolution is the overture to
collapse. While human nature and the apparently inexorable tendency of
government to metastasize dictates that this is almost certainly not
going to happen, it is fast becoming my view that the primary role of
the next president will be very publicly to explain his legal
limitations, and then to stick by them — perhaps even deliberately
losing a couple of issues to make a point. In the name of both security
and indifference, we have rendered far too much of what is ours to
Caesar. Cincinnatus, where art thou?

While researching and writing another book on charnel houses, art historian, Paul
Koudounaris, stumbled upon an amazing, if macabre, collection of 400 year-old, heavily jewel-encrusted skeletons hidden away in some of the most secretive religious establishments in Europe. His expedition and the resulting photographs of dozens of these relics is now being revealed in his new book, Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular
Saints from the Catacombs. This is the first time that photographs of the skeletons have been published.

St Valerius in Weyarn

A catacomb saint in Schlehdorf Abbey

St Albertus

The book marks the first time that the story of these relics, which were lovingly and lavishly adorned with thousands of pounds of gold, silver, pearls, and precious stones, is being told and it is one of mystery, the Catholic Church in Europe and the Protestant Reformation.

St Felix

According to the Daily Mail, 'thousands
of skeletons were dug up from Roman catacombs in the 16th century and
installed in towns around Germany, Austria and Switzerland on the orders
of the Vatican and sent to Catholic
churches and religious houses to replace the relics destroyed in the
wake of the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s. Each
one was painstakingly decorated by devoted followers before being displayed in church
niches. Many took up to five years to decorate. Some of
the skeletons are said to be the remains of early Christian martyrs and were
even found hidden away in lock-ups and containers.'

St Benedictus

St Deodatus in Rheinau, Switzerland

St Valentinus in Waldsassen

St Getreu in Ursberg, Germany

'Mistaken for the remains
of early Christian martyrs, the morbid relics, known as the Catacomb
Saints, became shrines reminding of the spiritual treasures of the
afterlife. They were also symbols of the Catholic Church's newly found strength in previously Protestant areas.'

St Friedrich at the Benedictine abbey in Melk,
Austria

The hand of St Valentin in Bad
Schussenreid, Germany (above) and St Munditia, in the church of St Peter
in Munich (below).

'They were renamed as saints,
although none of them qualified for the title under the strict rules of
the Catholic church which require saints to have been canonised, but
by the 19th century they had become morbid reminders of an embarrassing
past and many were stripped of their honours and discarded.'

St Vincentus in Stams, Austria

The identity of this skull is unknown

St Luciana was sent to the
convent in Heiligkreuztal, Germany, where the nuns in Ennetach painstakingly prepared her for display

In an interview, Mr Koudounaris said:

'After they were found in the Roman
catacombs the Vatican authorities would sign certificates identifying
them as martyrs then they put the bones in boxes and sent them
northwards. The skeletons would then be dressed and decorated in jewels, gold and silver, mostly by nuns. They
had to be handled by those who had taken a sacred vow to the church -
these were believed to be martyrs and they couldn't have just anyone
handling them. They were symbols of the faith triamphant and were made saints in the municipalities. One
of the reasons they were so important was not for their spiritual
merit, which was pretty dubious, but for their social importance. They
were thought to be miraculous and really solidified people's bond with a
town. This reaffirmed the prestige of the town itself. It's impossible to put a modern-day value on the skeletons.'

Dempsey’s unspoken words reflect the opinions of most serving
military leaders. By no means do I profess to speak on behalf of all of
our men and women in uniform. But I can justifiably share the sentiments
of those inside the Pentagon and elsewhere who write the plans and
develop strategies for fighting our wars. After personal exchanges with
dozens of active and retired soldiers in recent days, I feel confident
that what follows represents the overwhelming opinion of serving
professionals who have been intimate witnesses to the unfolding events
that will lead the United States into its next war.

They are embarrassed to be associated with the amateurism of
the Obama administration’s attempts to craft a plan that makes strategic
sense. None of the White House staff has any experience in war or
understands it. So far, at least, this path to war violates every
principle of war, including the element of surprise, achieving mass and
having a clearly defined and obtainable objective.

They are
repelled by the hypocrisy of a media blitz that warns against the return
of Hitlerism but privately acknowledges that the motive for risking
American lives is our “responsibility to protect” the world’s innocents.
Prospective U.S. action in Syria is not about threats to American
security. The U.S. military’s civilian masters privately are proud that
they are motivated by guilt over slaughters in Rwanda, Sudan and Kosovo
and not by any systemic threat to our country.

They are outraged
by the fact that what may happen is an act of war and a willingness to
risk American lives to make up for a slip of the tongue about “red
lines.” These acts would be for retribution and to restore the
reputation of a president. Our serving professionals make the point
that killing more Syrians won’t deter Iranian resolve to confront us.
The Iranians have already gotten the message.

Our people lament
our loneliness. Our senior soldiers take pride in their past commitments
to fight alongside allies and within coalitions that shared our
strategic goals. This war, however, will be ours alone.

They are
tired of wannabe soldiers who remain enamored of the lure of bloodless
machine warfare. “Look,” one told me, “if you want to end this
decisively, send in the troops and let them defeat the Syrian army. If
the nation doesn’t think Syria is worth serious commitment, then leave
them alone.” But they also warn that Syria is not Libya or Serbia.
Perhaps the United States has become too used to fighting third-rate
armies. As the Israelis learned in 1973, the Syrians are tough and
mean-spirited killers with nothing to lose.

Our military members
understand and take seriously their oath to defend the constitutional
authority of their civilian masters. They understand that the United
States is the only liberal democracy that has never been ruled by its
military. But today’s soldiers know war and resent civilian policymakers
who want the military to fight a war that neither they nor their loved
ones will experience firsthand.

Civilian control of the armed
services doesn’t mean that civilians shouldn’t listen to those who have
seen war. Our most respected soldier president, Dwight Eisenhower,
possessed the gravitas and courage to say no to war eight times during
his presidency. He ended the Korean War and refused to aid the French in
Indochina; he said no to his former wartime friends Britain and France
when they demanded U.S. participation in the capture of the Suez Canal.
And he resisted liberal democrats who wanted to aid the newly formed
nation of South Vietnam. We all know what happened after his successor
ignored Eisenhower’s advice. My generation got to go to war.

Over
the past few days, the opinions of officers confiding in me have
changed to some degree. Resignation seems to be creeping into their
sense of outrage. One officer told me: “To hell with them. If this guy
wants this war, then let him have it. Looks like no one will get hurt
anyway.”

Soon the military will salute respectfully and loose the
hell of hundreds of cruise missiles in an effort that will, inevitably,
kill a few of those we wish to protect. They will do it with all the
professionalism and skill we expect from the world’s most proficient
military. I wish Kerry would take a moment to look at the images from
this week’s hearings before we go to war again.

The administration's planned strike on Syria is increasingly opposed
by many in a U.S. military coping with the scars of two long wars, a
rapidly shrinking budget and soldiers saying we're "tired, stretched
thin and broke."

That sentiment was expressed by an active-duty soldier with a rank of
Sergeant First Class in an email to Rep. Justin Amash. The Michigan
Republican has been receiving, compiling and tweeting emails from
current and former service members now being asked to commit to an
ill-defined mission with an unclear goal in support of rebels mostly
linked to al-Qaida and other unfriendly interests.

"The message I consistently hear: Please vote no on military action
against Syria," Amash tweeted. Most objections relate to the lack of a
clear objective in striking Syria and the muddled line between
anti-government rebels and al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists.

The backlash against boots on the ground or even wings in the air has
exploded on social media. Many in the military are posting photos of
themselves holding signs stating they'd refuse to fight on the same side
as al-Qaida in Syria. The photos went viral, with one post alone
generating more than 16,000 shares on Facebook.

"Our involvement in Syria is so dangerous on so many levels, and the
21st century American vet is more keen to this than anybody," Business
Insider's Paul Szoldra quotes former Cpl. Jack Mandaville, a Marine
Corps infantry veteran with three deployments to Iraq. "It boggles my
mind that we are being ignored."

A decade of involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, with many of the
rank and file seeing the fruits of their victories squandered by the
Obama administration's precipitous, ideologically driven withdrawals,
raises the question why we should bother about Syria.

In a blistering editorial in the Washington Post, Maj. Gen. Robert
Scales, former commandant of the Army War College, touches on the
growing discontent among military leaders regarding Obama's reckless
combination of dithering and bravado on Syria.

"They are embarrassed to be associated with the amateurism of the
Obama administration's attempts to craft a plan that makes strategic
sense," Scales opines. "None of the White House staff has any experience
in war or understands it. So far, at least, this path to war violates
every principle of war, including the element of surprise, achieving
mass and having a clearly defined and obtainable objective."

According to Scales, the military is privately "outraged by the fact
that what may happen is an act of war and a willingness to risk American
lives to make up for a slip of the tongue about 'red lines.' " The
rank-and-file, in other words, are outraged that their blood may be shed
just to save presidential face.

The military can't afford any sustained campaign against Syria
without the kind of supplemental appropriation then-Sen. John Kerry was
for before he was against in Iraq. That fact, and the potential dangers
of mission creep, were highlighted in a July 19 letter by Chief of Staff
Gen. Martin Dempsey to Sen. Carl Levin, head of the Senate Armed
Services Committee.

Dempsey wrote then that using "lethal force to prevent the use or
proliferation of chemical weapons" could cost "well over $1 billion per
month." He also wrote that controlling chemical weapons would require
more resources than just air and cruise-missile strikes. He said it
would need to be coupled with "thousands of special operations forces
and other ground forces" to secure critical sites.

Sounds like boots on the ground to us.

During a hearing on Syria in front of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, committee Chairman Sen. Bob Menendez asked Kerry if there
would be any possibility of ground troops entering Syria at some point.

Kerry said the administration had "no desire" to put boots on the
ground. But he hinted it could happen in the event "Syria imploded . . .
or in the event there was a threat of a chemical weapons cache falling
into the hands of al-Nusra or someone else."

Then Kerry added, "I don't want to take off the table an option that
might or might not be available to the president of the United States to
secure our country."

Well, many in the military do, saying their boots aren't made for
walking on Syrian soil in a war we can't afford, particularly if it
means dying for al-Qaida. They are saying, "Hell, no, we shouldn't go."

Well, we always knew the Democrat leadership would fall in behind the
Prez on Syria – and Nancy Pelosi led the pack. Speaking yesterday she
made the standard humanitarian case for interventionbut then added her own cute spin.
Nancy told us that she asked her 5-year old grandson if he thought
America should go to war. “No!” he replied, so she gave him a lesson in
the importance of deterring the use of chemical weapons. There are two
things to take away from that surreal anecdote. A) Nancy discusses
foreign policy with 5-year olds. B) They know more about it than her.

But it turns out that the GOP leadership is supporting Barack Obama,
too. Sigh. We might have always expected John McCain (“Bomb, bomb, bomb,
bomb, bomb Iran”) and Lindsey Graham (Republican By Rumour Only) to
come out strongly for war, but it’s disappointing to note that John
Boehner and Eric Cantor were quick to follow. At least these gung-ho
Americans are all being honest about the realities of intervention.
While British hawks constantly assert that this is "only about chemical
weapons", Obama said as he met with congressional leaders: “We have a
broader strategy that will allow us to upgrade the capabilities of the
opposition”. So war leading to regime change, then – and something that
the Republican leadership is apparently very comfortable with. So
comfortable that John McCain was caughtplaying an iPhone game during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing into Syria.
What with Nancy asking 5-year olds their views and John playing 5-year
olds’ games, American politics isn’t looking terribly mature right now.

In his frustration, conservative guru Matt Drudge posted some angry tweets.
First: “It’s now Authoritarian vs. Libertarian. Since Democrats vs.
Republicans has been obliterated, no real difference between parties.”
And then (I don’t know if he drinks, but this feels about the fifth beer
in):

'Why would anyone vote Republican? Please give reason. Raised
taxes; marching us off to war again; approved more NSA snooping. WHO ARE
THEY?!'

Who indeed? Drudge makes an interesting point that although the Left
spent the 2012 election accusing the Republicans of being extremists,
since then the GOP leadership has tied itself to a big government
consensus on both civil liberties and war. Things are looking uncertain
on the question of defunding Obamacare, too. So if the parties are
agreed on fundamental questions about state power and constitutional
rights, who does offer an alternative?

This helpful Washington Post graphic actually shows that there’s more to play for in Congress than you’d expect,
with a significant contingent of Senate Republicans staking out a
position against war. And an example of the kind of thing that
principled conservatives can do when they put their minds to it was
shown by Rand Paul yesterday in his grilling of John Kerry – posted
above. Paul asked Kerry if the President would respect Congress’ verdict
if it voted intervention down. Kerry basically replied, “Maybe not”,
arguing that it was still within the President’s power to act. There
were also some fascinating skirmishes over the paradox of Kerry opposing
war in Cambodia in the 1970s but backing it in Libya and Syria,
climaxing in a spat over whether or not "limited" military action is
equivalent to saying, "We're in it, but we don't want to win it". Paul
beat Kerry on almost every point – and not with the force of his
somewhat clinical personality. It was because he kept referring to the
Constitution and the proper powers of Congress. While other politicians
were falling over themselves to make emotional appeals and invoke
conversations with their grandchildren, Paul was sticking to logic and
the law. It's refreshing.

So Drudge is right: the GOP’s leadership is lacking both a moral core
and a message at the moment. Americans basically face a choice between
two strands of big government thinking – one welfare orientated (Dems)
and one warfare orientated (Republicans). But there is cause to hope.
Although Obama scored a short-term win by throwing the question of war
open to Congress and thus exposing the divisions within the GOP, this
has also given conservatives the opportunity to debate philosophy and
what being a Republican actually means. Now they can sort the men of the
establishment from the men of conscience (and women – see Sarah Palin’s predictably robust case for staying out of Syria) and maybe throw up a few presidential contenders in the process. The Constitution isn't beaten yet.

06 September 2013

Sheer weapons grade stupidity on international display, my friends. If anyone is still arguing that we should follow the #SmartPower team into the Syrian hellhole, get thee to a shrink yesterday! We are in incredible danger with these fools WITHOUT starting to lob Tomahawks 'across Assad's bow.'

Total. Mindblowing. What. The. Bloody. Fuck?

From The Washington Examiner's Joel Gerhke:

Iran is enduring economic sanctions designed to slow the country's
nuclear weapons program, but President Obama's team thought the regime
might abandon dictator Bashar Assad over his use of chemical weapons in
Syria's civil war.

Samantha Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, hoped that
a team of UN investigators — many of whom, presumably, have a
longstanding relationship with Iranian leaders -- could write a report
that would convince Iran to abandon its ally at the behest of the United
States.

"We worked with the UN to create a group of inspectors and then
worked for more than six months to get them access to the country on the
logic that perhaps the presence of an investigative team in the country
might deter future attacks," Power said at the Center for American
Progress as she made the case for intervening in Syria.

"Or, if not, at a minimum, we thought perhaps a shared evidentiary
base could convince Russia or Iran — itself a victim of Saddam Hussein's
monstrous chemical weapons attacks in 1987-1988 — to cast loose a
regime that was gassing it's people," she said.

Rather than "cast loose" Assad after the latest chemical weapons
attack, as the Obama team hoped, "Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah
Khamenei has warned the Obama administration against any proposed
military strike on Syria," as the International Business Timesreports.